Egoism
Individualism
Sovereignty
Splendor

(These ideas are explicated in this sloppy manifesto)

 
Oh, good grief...

I said:

I myself am fairly consistently frustrated with what I think of as hysterical libertarian rhetoric. The sky can only fall so many times in any given day. At the same time, I have always thought that Personal Liberty, freedom from the inside out, is the only kind that matters. It were well to be free of taxes and insane barriers to action, but it is better still to be the kind of person who can rejoice in life as it is, rather than constantly whining about all the peas under the mattresses. I am ripe with fable[....] We have but one life. To the extent that we sacrifice it to misery about what might be, but isn't, to that extent we are self-enslaved.

This is inarguable, of course. But nine-year-old girls don't argue, anyway. They pout and sniffle and whine.

What a coward. What a buffoon. What a waste...

Rest easy, though, Poppet. You have your wish. No one hates the mess you've made of your life more than you do.
posted by Greg Swann at 9:59 AM

 
And the answer is... anarchy...

Richard Nikoley fingered this. As with a lot of these things, some questions were so vague as to imply diametrically opposite answers, both plausible. For example, "I would defend my property with lethal force." Most anarchists would say Yes to that, but I say no because the key word is "property." Defending one's life with lethal force is perfectly appropriate. Killing over things is disproportionate except in the most extreme of circumstances. Anyway, herewith:

You are a Social Liberal (88% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (91% permissive) You are best described as a: Anarchist Link: The Politics Test

posted by Greg Swann at 8:39 PM

 
SplendorQuest: Bob Dylan in a stolen moment...

I have three words for Bob Dylan: You're a liar!

We bought Scorcese's No Direction Home on DVD--not alone because I completely despise PBS. We watched Part I last night, the part the everyone is seeing on TV tonight. We just now finished watching Part II.

Last night I thought that Dylan had made a big mistake, since every claim the man makes on pop culture comes from being obtuse and obscure. I thought that he had blown it irredeemably by revealing too much.

After Part II, I see that I was mistaken: Everything that matters is still obscured.

The underlying beauty behind this whole project is a documentary that was to have been made for ABC television during Dylan's European tour in the spring of 1966. Among the many contractual obligations bearing down on him when he returned to the U.S., the man himself was to have edited this footage. Instead, he smashed up a motorcycle, relieving himself of all obligations for a while.

The upshot is that this film has never been seen until now. And Scorcese would have made a much better work of art had he simply edited the 1966 footage into a concert film.

Instead, we get endless senseless interviews with people who don't matter--most especially including Bob Dylan himself, who denies all knowledge of everything. And we get not one moment of the kind of searing truth that would reveal so much of the man behind the masks.

For example, one simple question: "In the years between 1964 and 1966, the years covered in Part II of this supposed documentary, were you ever completely sober, Mr. Dylan?"

We see footage of performance after performance, interview after interview, studio session after studio session. In each one of these shots, it is obvious that Dylan is either drunk or high or both. Zero exceptions. Did it occur to no one on this project to say, "Was there ever a time that you thought you might have a problem?"

How about this question? "Hey, Bob. Along about the time of 'Bringing It All Back Home,' your much-heralded poetry started to sound a little like word salad. By 'Highway 61 Revisited,' you were a virtual word salad buffet. These two albums bookend your involvement with Andy Warhol--itself documented in 'Like A Rolling Stone' and hardly addressed at all by Scorcese. The question is this: Was it Warhol who taught you that pigs will eat anything, or did you work that out on your own?"

Oh, but that's kind of mean, even though Dylan was a mean little man in those years. This, too, is carefully obscured by Scorcese, even though it has already been fully revealed by the far superior Don't Look Back by D.A. Pennebaker.

But there was a certain kind of justice in Dylan's meanness. He was being martyred by a super-human image. He was wise enough not to let himself be made into a messiah, but both the messiah-making machine and his own resistance to it go largely unexplored. "How does it feel," I want to ask, "not to be eaten alive by insane adulation?"

And this is where the 1966 footage is largely wasted. Because that tour, from Newport 1965 to Forest Hills to America to Australia to Europe, 15 months or more on the road, was all about Dylan doing everything he could to reject and shun his own fame, his own notoriety--his own mindlessly adoring fans. The insane energy that comes out of this scrappy little man as he shouts down the audiences who are trying to boo him off the stage they paid to put him on--this is the naked paradox of pop art as it is never seen, the devil's bargain exposed.

Dylan denies knowing anything about any of this. Who knows, it might be true. But the question I would ask--the first question anyone should ask, but probably the last question anyone would be allowed to ask--is simply this: "Why, Bob Dylan, if you are as completely without guile as you claim to be throughout this documentary--glorious when you sing and wretched when you talk--why the fuck can you not ever make eye contact with anyone?"

I've known the answer to that one since I was a teenager, listening to 'Before The Flood' over and over again. It's because you're a liar...
posted by Greg Swann at 8:59 PM

 
The mark of Cain...

Richard Nikoley writes:

Regarding your thesis of how homo sapiens behave, and innovation, I see perfectly what you mean, once I consider primitive tribes living in jungles and hunter-gatherers to this day, etc.

But how do you explain things such as the ancient Mayan, Egyptian, and Chinese cultures, among others, that had no contact with the west?

I would fully agree that all progress today is western progress, but didn't those other civilizations at least take a stab at it and came up short? It's not that they spurned getting out of the jungles and desserts and building products of the mind.

What do you think?

I think Cain is much, much older than that. The actual Cain story dates in various versions to Mesopotamia, but Cain as the father of the uniquely human mind would have to be much older than any lore we have available to us today--older even than any language we know of.

All of the ancient civilizations Richard cites are attempts to strike a compromise with the Individualist idea--just as our own civilization is. They failed because they ossified--they refused to innovate when circumstances changed. This fate may await our own civilization as well.

The point is that all of the high civilizations--and there are very few of them--are children of Cain. The precursors to the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and Anasazi crossed the land bridge to North America only 10,000 years ago. You could say that these and other high civilizations "had no contact with the west," but it remains that they and all the pre-cursors to Western civilization grew from the same one root. Cain's idea was treasured more highly in the culture that grew to become the West--it would be accurate to say that the West is the best-yet flowering of Cain's idea--but all of the high civilizations are reflections (in sometimes perverted form) of Cain.

This, incidentally, is why high civilizations other than the truly Western civilization need a story that villainizes Cain, because they both need and despise what he is. By now we are not very far from the plot of Atlas Shrugged.
posted by Greg Swann at 3:58 PM

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